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Though I am still a registered Republican I will soon be switching to the Democratic Party. There are three reasons for this switch:

A. I’m not a racist (and I don’t hate Gays, Muslims , Hispanics or women who work outside the home).

B. I’m not stupid enough to believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old (however I do know that evolution and climate change are both scientific facts)

C. And I believe in representative Democracy (as in “We the People”) instead of corrupt, oppressive oligarchic rule by the uber-rich.
As you can see, my old GOP is dead and I no longer belong in the new GOP - I will soon be leaving.

So the choices are moderate conservative and extremely conservative. Wouldn't that just make the Democrats more liberal. What is the statement of "Democrats are conservative" based on if they are the major left leaning party?

The most prominent Democratic legislation of the last 5 years is the ACA: a conservative plan to fix the health care system that carefully preserves the profit systems of the health care, insurance, and drug industries.

Why would you call the Democratic Party a left leaning party? If anything they are politicking from the center.

In North America, unlike in Europe, the word liberalism almost exclusively refers to social liberalism in contemporary politics. The dominant Canadian and American parties, the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party, are frequently identified as being modern liberal or centre-left organisations in the academic literature.

Judging America to Europe is moot. Compare Republicans to certain countries in Africa and they would be seen as left of center on a global scale. We are talking about the U.S. Even in Europe the word liberal has changed from the definition of classical liberalism.

I was picking Europe for its length of use of democracy as well as it's status amongst what is considered first world countries. The practices of "certain countries" in Africa can make most racists blush.

In this regard I do not think comparing Europe and American politics is moot.

The most prominent Democratic legislation of the last 5 years is the ACA: a conservative plan to fix the health care system that carefully preserves the profit systems of the health care, insurance, and drug industries.

A plan that requires you by the state to purchase insurance which conservatives are against today and didn't have enough support 25 years ago when a similar idea rolled out of the Heritage Foundation. Perhaps it's a more moderate approach than universal health care, but I find government mandated insurance to be something a statist would be for which should be the opposite of a traditional conservative approach.

Why would you call the Democratic Party a left leaning party? If anything they are politicking from the center.

Within the boundaries of the US they can't be said to be politicking from the center. There are two parties. What they agree on is center. Then you have their differences, being liberal or conservative, that make them different. For example gun control is not a centrist or moderate issue. It's a liberal issue. Democrats are to the left of Republicans on this, but they are certainly not in the center.

Edit: 5 minutes and already down voted. Call Republicans racists and get upvoted. Question the trope that Democrats are conservative, an idea that is not accepted by the majority outside of this thought vacuum, get silenced. Stay classy.

Within the boundaries of the US they can't be said to be politicking from the center. There are two parties. What they agree on is center. Then you have their differences, being liberal or conservative, that make them different.

You're defining liberal and conservative only in terms of a snapshot of the present-day U.S., whereas most people here define them in terms of the rest of the developed world, as well as considering their historical meaning within the U.S. for at least the post-war era. That's the main source of the disconnect.

Perhaps it's a more moderate approach than universal health care, but I find government mandated insurance to be something a statist would be for which should be the opposite of a traditional conservative approach.

The thing is, once you mandate that emergency care has to be provided regardless of ability to pay (which both sides actually seem to agree is a moral imperative), you have to have some system to ensure a high level of coverage, or else watch healthcare costs spiral out of control to cover the costs, which is what we'd been doing for the last several decades.

It ceases to be a matter of liberal or conservative at that point (unless you're such an ideologue that you'd prefer to see healthcare costs rise out of reach of a very large percentage of the population). Of the available options, it's hard to imagine one that's much more in line with conservative philosophy than the ACA.

You just came to reddit, home of the liberal gun nut crowd, and tried to claim they are for gun control. You're either new here or you have done no research. Your statements are rooted in the same ignorance of the republican party- "these are black and white issues and one side is for them while one side is against!!" That's not how america works, that's simply how some politicians and opportunists think it works.

Gun control is a great example, I know lefties that want nothing to do with gun control, and I know righties that think maybe we should have some kind of gun control, because we're talking about a device which literally exists to kill. Now before you give me the old tired trope of "they were invented for hunting hurr!!!!" please do yourself a favor and look up the first guns. Yeah, Chinese fire lances designed to hurl shrapnel and fire at your enemy. Now one could say that wanting gun control would make one authoritarian, but which party is classically the authoritarian one? I'll give you a hint, it ain't the peace loving "the man" hating liberals. No, for real control you've got to ask yourself, who wants to make up a bunch of laws the tell me what I can and can't do in my own private life? Who keeps telling me who I can't marry? Who led the charge against drugs?

Your other problem is your statements about "a traditional conservative approach", many stances of American conservatives have nothing to do with "traditional conservatives", you say government mandated insurance is the opposite of a conservative stance, but not here in America buddy, "conservatives" here are all about putting all the laws on you they can to control what to do say and even think. What do I mean? Who wanted to ban the burning of flags? Conservatives. Who wants to declare you can't marry or in some states even have sex with someone who is of the same sex as you? Conservatives. Who backed all the anti drug legislation over the last century? Conservatives.

You got downvoted because you're talking about a fantasy world, and ignoring reality. Technically we DO have a liberal party, we have a few of them, one is called the Green Party, one is called a Socialist party, but none of them have representation in major government positions because the 2 teams we have realized that as long as they act mostly the same as each other and decry and different act as insane and "crazy leftist liberal" they can both be conservative, and they can completely and utterly block the real leftists out of government.

We have no major "liberal" political party in the US. When you actually look at issues the gop is far right and the democrats middle/right moderate. To say that the democratic party is liberal by default is disingenuous at best, if not just a bald-faced lie.

This only works in a broad, vague sense, as you're using countries like New Zealand, Norway, Finland, etc. as comparisons vs. America.

I get where you're going there. But it doesn't work that way.

Each of the aforementioned countries has an inner political climate that changes every so often. America wasn't always conservative, and it's not always going to be so. Same goes for any country that's 'liberal' right now (looking at you, Britain and Australia, and your scumbag PMs.)

What this statement means is that each country needs to be judged politically WITHIN ITS OWN SPECTRUM. You can't lump them all together and say 'see, the dems and the GOP are BOTH super conservative, they're so similar!' Yes, they are. But only on a very broad, global scale, where liberal and conservative are EXTREME differences, where on a national scale they really aren't, at least in America.

We vote for 'liberal' (read: Moderate) candidates rather than 'conservative' candidates. Does that mean our 'liberal' candidates are objectively liberal? HELL NO. Does that mean, relatively speaking (national point of view), that the democrats are MORE liberal than the GOP, and thus are labeled liberals? Yes, that's a valid statement.

Just to clarify. I'm not attacking you, i'm just trying to correct this train of thought that America is equivalent to the rest of the world in political terms, which it isn't. It's a very large country with very odd politics, and every country has a different political environment. Ours just happens to be very conservative at this moment.

At least you have the proud display of ignorance part of conservativism down pat. Show us a single socialist party in Europe that has a position that is more to the right than American democrats. You can't, because there isn't.

A plan that requires you by the state to purchase insurance which conservatives are against today and didn't have enough support 25 years ago when a similar idea rolled out of the Heritage Foundation.

You have to provide proof of that statement and I really don't know how you can. My guess is liberals were against the idea 25 years ago so if it never came up for a vote we can not have a record of conservative support. You may be able to supply conservative articles etc from 25 years ago denouncing the idea but those can not represent what votes may have been cast.

Splitting the difference to find the the middle is no longer relevent. one side takes a extreme stance the other side takes a moderate stance when you split the difference you do not end up in the center. Example I want to continue to live someone else wants to kill me right fucking now them killing me next week is not a fair middle ground.

They're the most left leaning of the two parties but that doesn't mean they're actually left wing. Imagine if you had two parties, the current GOP and a true-to-form fascist party. The GOP would be considered the "liberal" party and the fascist party the conservative party. In reality, it just completely distorts things in that the "liberal/left wing" party isn't actually liberal or left wing in any historical/global sense, they're just the more left leaning of the parties. The Democratic party right now has more in common with Ronald Reagan than left wing politics. Both parties have slowly moved to the right in the past 30-40 years with the GOP moving right faster.

What is the statement of "Democrats are conservative" based on if they are the major left leaning party?

If you look at major parties in most of the rest of the world and compare their main left party to our main left party you'd start to really see what's up. In most countries the mainstream left-leaning parties are Social Democrats in the sort of vain of Sweden/Norway. Their mainstream right-leaning parties are usually around where our Democrats are.

I LOVE to hear that there are people like you out there. I am very much a democrat, but I always tell people when talking politics that I have no problems with a true republican. Give me a true republican any day and me and them could make the country a better place. We both have the mindset that we must work together, through our differences of opinion to create what will be the best choices and opportunities for this country. My true issue lies with the tea party. Throwing a temper tantrum and shutting down the government is no way to run a country, its no way to run a household. Its the negotiation technique of a toddler and is unacceptable in modern society. So to you, good internet user, I giver you an awesome person high five!

I agree with your sentiment 100% although we need to accept that this is the GOP now. What the party was in the days of Eisenhower is over. Claiming that today's flock of Republicans are not "true" Republicans gets us close to committing a No True Scotsman Fallacy.

Our Nations founders would look at today's Tea Party and shake their heads in disgust. I was born and raised in a very Republican manner. I grew up with very Right-Wing Conservative ideals, went to church, drank the kool aid... Now my parents and I have a hard time talking.. because they still drink the Kool aid. :(

I view it more as moderate Republicans just need a new name. At some point saving a name (or abbreviation) is not just an uphill battle but entirely irredeemable. E.g. only an idiot would name their social group dedicated to friendliness to strangers, "Keep Kindness Kicking."

Welcome to the club. I was a Republican from the early 80's until shortly after 9/11 when I began to question them. Like you, I was never comfortable with the racist and the evangelicals, but I figured there were probably similar things with Democrats. I switched to "independent" in 2002 and on the day that Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy, I registered Democrat. I am now an office holder on our town Democrat Committee.

But but, it fits so nicely with the narrative! He woke up today and realized he wasn't a racist. Logically, his beliefs fit mostly with the democrats. Not like those racist woman hating Republicans. Did I mention Republicans are minority hating yet?

Please don't fall for Democrat propaganda. They're doing their very best to take the most ignorant people in the Republican party and paint them as the face of the Tea Party. For years, the reason I called myself Tea Party was for reason C that you gave. The Republican Party is controlled by elites. We want to get it back. Right now the Democratic party is controlled by elites too, and they have no movement to unseat them from power. If you listen closely, you can even hear top Democrats praising people like John McCain and Jeb Bush.

I completely agree, except that way of thinking goes both ways. During election campaigns especially, people of both parties forget about disagreements they have with candidates and start cheering for team red or team blue. Then, after they've been in office for 6 months, the high wears away.

Because John McCain and Jeb Bush sound like Democrats on certain issues. My father is a tea-party nutcase and sends me all kinds of stuff from them. They are even crazier and more bigoted than run of the mill republicans.

Putting aside your insult calling me and most of the people I know bigots, if by "sound like Democrats" you mean "sound like the elite of our 2 party system that agree with big business on important issues" I totally agree.

It's the same mantra here really. The Tea Party is racist, vote for the elite Republicans who control the Republican National Committee instead.

What attracted your friends to the Republican party though? For me it's economics, even though I think most of them are hypocrites. I'd love it if backwoods racists didn't believe in limited government too, but I don't see any alternative whatsoever with Democrats.

You are switching to the party that wants the govt to think and do more for them at the expense of your neighbors liberty and freedom?

No he said he's switching AWAY from that party, he's tired of drug laws, laws about who you can marry, who you can have sex with, who you can freely associate with, what you can do with your own body. You know, the republicans.

You should? Says who? You get to associate with anyone you want -- however it's been the law for a long time now that if you're operating a place of public accommodation, for example, you serve all comers.

Why shouldn't you have to serve all comers as opposed to being able to exclude blacks?